Tom Smith

I got an RT of at least one person arguing explicitly that the teachers and administrators at that school should have been carrying, because the gun-free zone "[m]akes children sitting ducks."

I'm attacking him. I'm attacking him and people like him head-on.

I'm sitting here just bawling. I have grandchildren in elementary school. It's eleven days until Christmas. There are Kindergartners among the dead.
The next person that says, "You can take my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands." needs to have that statement taken as a CHALLENGE!

I don't know whether to turn the news on, or go hide in a corner.

An ELEMENTARY school?!

I have no words. I'm trying to keep from crying at work.

As I said on FB...

Predicted reaction from the NRA to the tragedy in Connecticut: "If only more 10-year-olds were permitted to carry firearms to elementary school, this would never have happened."

Bastards.

I have no words right now for how I feel. I'm in shock and horrified at the actions of a cowardly, evil man. How do you decide to kill children? No I don't think that the teachers should have been armed. I think that we need to make a world where people don't need guns because we all love one another, and where children can be safe from people like the coward who did the shooting.

Its things like this that make me hate guns more than I already do. I don't have any answers right now, and I dearly wish that I did.

Babies. He was killing babies.

We need more strict rules on who can get a gun, and what kind of gun. We need stronger mental health care, we need safety nets for people who fall through the cracks of the mental health system. We need SOMETHING, dammit, but what we've got ISNT WORKING.

I want to drive to my 17 year old's school and hug her and I am sitting at work in tears because this could happen ANYWHERE. It could have been her school, it could have been my nephew's school, it could have been any school in the damn country. This KEEPS HAPPENING.

It strikes me, on the question of gun control and the general unwillingness to discuss it, that this sort of thing will keep happening until the very thing the anti-control people want to prevent becomes the only accepted answer; No guns available to citizens at all.

It's high time for an adult discussion. A reasonable discussion. Before it becomes far too late for anything of the sort.

Arm the six year olds... Because god knows the adults can't handle the responsibility...

Can we PLEASE do something about the mental health system in this country? Please?

But until we know more about him (like his name, what he has done in the past, etc) we can't know what it was.

Mental illness is a bar to firearm ownership. Because of laws like HIPPA, the government won't know if you're taking anti-psycotic meds, or seeing a psychologist or are in therapy for anger issues. Unless you get in trouble with the law, it does not turn up on any back ground checks.

This is to "protect" people with mental illnesses from discrimination.

To keep anyone with any possible mental illness from owning a firearm, this would require the FBI to have unrestricted access to your personal medical files to be able to review any drug you have ever taken, know what doctors or therapy you have ever received. I'm very sure I don't want that.

Something is wrong that this guy (or guys? the media can't seem to figure this out yet). He should not have had a weapon, much less a dull spoon. But how would anyone have known if he never was committed or treated under court order? With out unlimited access to everyone's medical records the government would not be able to check. (granted this guy could turn out to be a long term committed/jailed nut who had been in and out of prison and mental centers for all his life. We don't know at this time. If he did, someone screwed up in letting him buy a firearm)

In the face of horror, it's very human to want to make changes that will prevent bad things from happening. Some feel that the answer to the problem is to wrap guns up in so many layers of red tape that they go away. Some feel that an armed society is a polite one. Neither side wants to see children die.

It's hard to remember in the face of emotion that someone who disagrees with you probably wants the same end result you do. It's human nature to see something awful and think "how can I prevent this?" I'm trying to keep compassion in my heart for both sides of the argument.

I can just hear the NRA now "If only our kids were Ramboed up starting in kindergarten, this never could have happened."

I have no words nasty and scornful enough for them, and no words gentle enough for the victims and their families. I hope, in time, they can find some peace.

I think we need to make a point that most people with mental health conditions never have and never would hurt anyone. They like the rest of us would wrestle crocodiles to protect a child.

But a small minority are dangerous to the public, (at least sometimes.) Sometimes people are fine while in treatment or on meds, and very different without them.

There are all sorts of rules in place for who gets to have guns, and which guns, and why.

If everyone had much less access to guns, those who want to do harm could do much less harm before being stopped.

Meanwhile in China a guy went nuts at a school today & stabbed 22 people, including a number of kids. They've had issues in China with guys going nuts & attacking elementary schools because they want weak targets that can't fight back. He was stopped by unarmed security guards, and only 2 people were seriously, but not fatally, hurt.

The gun people are missing the point & saying "See? All he had was a knife! You want to regulate KNIVES now?" Yeah, no. If he'd had guns it would have been WORSE.

Edited at 2012-12-14 08:31 pm (UTC)

I too am angry to hear this news, but the first group that I want to blame and unleash my vitriol upon is not any part of the gun rights community. No, I first think to blame our bottom-feeding, debased, all-that-matters-is-more-ad-revenue media, who every time this has happened since Columbine has given it so much wall-to-wall saturation coverage that the first thing that any crazy soul who's truly desperate to make some kind of mark on a world that doesn't care about him thinks of is to shoot up a school. Unless someone uses a nuclear weapon in the middle east, this is going to be the only story on the US media for the next week, until the world doesn't end on Dec. 21. And somewhere out there, there's some guy with nothing to do right now but watch the TV that it's going to make an impression on, and in a year or five, he's going to decide it would be fun to one up this one. And when it happens, to whatever extent it's someone else's fault besides his own, that fault will be on the media extravaganza that planted the seed.

My right to send my kids to school without fear that they will be mass-murdered outweighs your right to own an assault weapon, IMO. My right to watch a movie without thinking that this one is the one where I will be mowed down with a semi-automatic outweighs your right to own one.

2nd amendment says you have the right to bear arms. But arms have changed quite a bit since the 1780s. No one thinks that Joe Schmo has a right to have a nuclear bomb in his basement. That's ridiculous! But that's just as much of an arm as any of the other weapons the NRA is so fond of.

I felt sick hearing about this. My thoughts are with the families of the victims.

And now, due to our need for 24/7 instant news, we're learning that they misidentified the shooter. Ryan is the shooter's younger brother, who returned home today to cops in front of his house, and most if not all of his family dead.

Here's my thoughts. I didn't mention the Second Amendment, but I did (and do) still oppose banning guns outright.

http://redneckgaijin.livejournal.com/575607.html

Someone on Pharyngula said something about the NRA. I hope it's not true, but I got a sick feeling it is.

After JFK got shot there was talk about banning certain types of rifles. The NRA supported the ban. It wasn't until the civil rights era did the NRA go all "keep all the guns" crazy. Yep, once "those people" started pushing back against how they were being treated the NRA suddenly decided people needed more guns.

Like I said, I don't want this to be true. Can anyone confirm/deny it?

And I'll step up and tell anyone who thinks it was where to get off.

You're right about one thing though, we don't teach people to look up to Mister Rogers anymore. We don't teach kindness, compassion and love for their own sake, we treat those things as weaknesses. You can see it whenever someone famous goes on a food stamp budget to raise awareness of what poor people have to go through and some dim bulb pundit makes fun of them for actually caring about poor people. You see it when people like John Stossel or Bill-O are given air time to talk about how the "takers" are stealing from the "achievers."

We have to start teaching and living kindness for its own sake. How we do that I don't know but we have to start somewhere.

You said that very nicely, Tom.

I agree with much of what people are saying here about getting people access to mental health care, and that being a part of the solution.

I disagree, like many, with Mr. Obama's not wanting to "politicize" the event by bringing up gun control. The NRA, Fox News and Mike Huckabee are already on that job, on the wrong side of it. More prayer or inflicting religion on school children is no more of a solution than handing out ouzis to kindergarten kids.

The other thing that annoys me is the constant smug self-righteous use of prayer in these situations. Everyone has a right to their own religious views, but I just wish they'd follow this advice of some guy named Matthew: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward."

No one should ever tell me they will pray for me. I'm likely to tell them, "fine, I'll think for you," then unfriend them on Facebook.

The right wing is now coming out and blaming the shooting on the lack of prayer in schools. Apparently prayer would have stopped the bullets BECAUSE JESUS.

Brian Fischer, head of the American Family Association and one of the GOP's kingmakers/breakers: http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/god-didnt-save-kids-because-theres-no

Mike Huckabee (if you don't know who he is, you're probably fortunate): http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/huckabee-schools-place-of-carnage-because-we-systematically

Problem is, all this discussion of gun control is going to be made moot in the next 5-10 years, if not sooner. In that timeframe, 3-D printing is likely going to improve to the point where it is possible to print an entire gun.
Possibly you will not be able to print the barrel itself, in which case there will be a black market in those parts - which are much easier to hide than a full-fledged gun.
Equally likely the tech will advance to the point where the barrel can be printed too. At that point, there is no legislative solution other than draconian regulation of 3-D printing technology.